Half-baked Tamarac ploy could rise elsewhere

Now that the city has backed off its plan to sock 14 businesses with outrageous assessments to fund its trendy Main Street project, it will try to come up with $8.8 million some other way.

Maybe city commissioners can hold a bake sale, right there on the desolate stretch of Northwest 57th Street that surely one day will rival Las Olas Boulevard for hip-ness.

Just sell cookies for $10,000, brownies for $25,000 and some froufrou French pastries for $50,000.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Call it Half-Baked on Main.

I know, I know, I should give the commission credit for returning to Planet Earth and reversing course on the plan that would have had some businesses, like a nursing home, pay more than a half-million bucks for the privilege of being so close to such fabulousness.

But I have a hard time giving credit to politicians who should have known better from the start.

"This is a good idea that fell off the trolley," Mayor Beth Flansbaum-Talabisco said Wednesday, referring to the Main Street project that nobody wants to pay for. "Now we take a deep breath and chill."

The mayor declined to talk when I wrote about this last week because of a pending lawsuit by eight property owners. Wednesday, we had a nice long chat. She said the Main Street vision isn't as highfalutin as critics make it out to be, and nobody wanted to put elderly residents in wheelchairs out into the street.

"It didn't play out in my mind that I was taxing 67 seniors, but that I was taxing a for-profit business," Flansbaum-Talabisco said. "The city knew when to change course."

She can spin it how she likes, but bruised feelings remain.

Beth Tokarz-Besu, whose family owns the Active Senior Living Residence Center and faced a $526,932 bill under the plan, said she was glad the city "came to its senses," but took issue with a statement the mayor released on Tuesday.

In it the mayor said, "The notion that this commission would intentionally do anything to put senior citizens in jeopardy [of losing their home] ... is absurd, personally offensive and a misrepresentation of our position."

Said Tokarz-Besu: "Then what were they trying to do? I think they knew that we were here, and I think they knew the assessment could have forced us out of business."

A tax invoice sent last month warned, "Failure to pay may result in a loss of title." City Manager Jeff Miller said in a recent television interview that the assessments could cause "casualties." A city staffer's e-mail last year noted the assessment strategy "might be used to help 'relocate' some businesses that might not be a good fit with future Main Street development."

The good news is the checks and balances of a free society - courts, news media and public opinion - forced the commission to reconsider.

The bad news is there's no assurance other cities won't try dubious ploys like these in the future, especially with property tax changes threatening to put a crimp on local budgets and new restrictions on cities' use of eminent domain for redevelopment.

Current law allows cities to impose special assessments on property owners for certain improvements.

"Who determines what the [assessment] benefit is worth - the city that's doing the taxing?" said Tokarz-Besu. "That's so subjective. ... Maybe somebody needs to spearhead an effort that would limit these assessments."

State Sen. Jeremy Ring, a Democrat from Parkland who took issue with Tamarac's tactics, said he's working on a bill for next spring's legislative session that would cap the amount cities can charge for special assessments.

One argument local governments make against the stern property-tax measures debated in Tallahassee is that they know the needs and desires of their constituencies best.

Tamarac's recent behavior shows just how out of touch local governments can be.

"Lesson learned," Flansbaum-Talabisco said.

We can only hope.

Michael Mayo's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. He can be reached at mmayo@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4508.